


How the gecko gloves came about

by Womble1



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Gen, Karaoke, cocktails, drunken brothers, geeks in museum, museum, night out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-19 01:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29618163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Womble1/pseuds/Womble1
Summary: Theres an interesting story behind the orginal inspiration for the grippy gloves. (this may or may not be it, but it seems plausable)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	How the gecko gloves came about

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WillowDragonCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowDragonCat/gifts).



> Borrowing Selene from @Willow-salix for this one, Selene seems to like getting the boys to let their hair down as much as I do. I Hope it sits as a fair representation of her.

Selene rolled herself over where she was comfortably lounging on the sofa “What are we doing for Brain’s birthday?” she asked the room at large, she pushed herself up on an elbow when no response was forthcoming. Glancing from face to face only supplied her with an assortment of blank looks. 

Feeling that leaving the witch unanswered would probably end badly, and most likely he would get the brunt of it, John took one for the team. He tapped her leg where it was draped across his lap to refocus the death stare in his direction.

“It’s not his birthday this month, we’ve got reminders set up for everyone” he explained calmly. 

“Nope, it's definitely two weeks on Tuesday.” she said with finality, “So I ask again, what are we doing?”

John sighed, and pulled up a screen showing a calendar and started flipping through the months ready to prove his point. Selene watched the screen with detached interest as his fingers made the display fly faster and faster, a frown forming as he wasn't able to find the data he was looking for. 

“Something wrong, Oh love of my life?” she asked sweetly as he pulled up pages of background code and the frown went to canyon proportions.

“It's odd,” he replied, gently shunting her legs off him so he could sit up and give the information before him his full attention. “Brain’s birthday isn’t listed here - anywhere, it's almost like it's been wiped from the records….” Selene patted him on the arm, like one might a small child who had recounded a major drama, but you couldn't really follow the gist of the story. 

“Ok, but it's a week on Tuesday, so …...what are we doing?” She wasn't going to get distracted from her original purpose, John had gone all techy and there was no point trying to keep up, especially not when there was a birthday to plan.

“How can you be so sure?” Scott asked, looking up from the desk across the room from them. Her constant repetition had broken into his concentration and he was hoping that if the questions got resolved he might get some peace again. “If it's not in the records, how do you know when his birthday is?”

“Because I know! God do you all just rely on a digital reminder for every important date?” she looked from brother to brother and got a series of nods.

“Who are you trying to kid?” Gordon asked, parking his magazine on his stomach where he was laid across the opposite sofa. “Sel, you can't remember what month it is half the time!”

Selene sat upright, a hand to her chest in shock “How very dare you!” her raised one eyebrow and held her gaze unflinchingly “Oh, OK! I know, because I have it written in my diary from when I did some readings for him ages ago.”

“Hang on” said Gordon, “just a few things to unpackage there” he pulled himself upright “firstly - diary? As in an actual paper diary? Do they even make those anymore?” Selene poked her tongue out at him, and that was the only answer he was going to get “Secondly: readings for Mr Science-pants?”

“Yes, and Yes,” replied Selene, “ It was back when he was trying to study me, when he was trying to dissect my broom and kept stealing hair samples. But you’re still getting away from the point. Birthday. Brains. Plans?” she listed the points off on her fingers and then enthusiastically waggled the three fingers in Gordons direction. “Come on Gordo, you’re my party planning buddy, what are we doing?”

Johns mutterings had grown louder next to her and Selene felt that maybe she ought to check in on the hubby. Ever concerned and caring, she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, in what she felt sure was a suitably caring manner. 

“You alright there darling? You're muttering.”

His eyes didn't leave the screens “But it doesn't make sense, how has the data become corrupted? Unless...but why? But it's the only answer.”

“Nope, not making much more sense there love, is this something I need to understand or can I file it under ‘ask EOS’?” that drew him out of his musings enough to give her a quizzical look, as if he had just remembered she was still there. 

“Huh?” although it hadn’t bought his verbal reasoning up to speed. 

“What's bothering you?” she said slowly “and does it have anything to do with birthday plans for Brains?”

“Yes!” he said, brain fully back on line and ready to share his findings “Yes, it looks as if Brains himself has taken his birthday out of the records, and fairly recently at that, it's almost as if he's trying to hide it.”

“But why?” asked Scott, still far too invested in the conversation to be able to focus on his own work.

“Unfortunately the code isn't exactly going to enlighten me on that front,” Sarcastic? John? Never! “But, going out on a limb, maybe because he doesn't want us to know when his birthday is?”

“Ah, but he didn't count on Miss analogue over there!” shouted Gordon.

“Excuse me! Is Mrs, thank you very much, and my analogue is saving you all from missing the upcoming birthday.”

“Right up until you lose the diary” muttered John.

“Once!” The indignation was genuine this time. 

“Ok, ok,” Scott attempted to calm the situation from his safe spot behind the desk, “but maybe this means that Brains doesn’t want any fuss for his birthday, in which case we should respect that - right?” He looked around the room for support.

“I know that face” said Selene, pointed an accusatory finger in Scott’s direction, “ you just don’t want to be in involved in planning,” she glanced at Virgil who has remained diplomatically quiet throughout “He was the same when planning yours”, sod it, if Scott wasn’t going to be helpful then she had no qualms about throwing him under the bus. Also Virgil was usually good for creative birthday planning, so she wanted to get the chonk on side sharpish. 

John saved Virgil from having to answer, “Well it looks like he’s going to London on his birthday” he interrupted, his nose still firmly in reams of data. “He would appear to be going for dinner with Moffie” 

“Seriously, you can find all that, but not his birthday?” Selene was incredulous.

“I told you, the data has been corrupted. Very thoroughly and deliberately corrupted.” John seemed pretty put out by this fact. Selene gave him another couple of pats on the arm to tide him over. 

“Yes, I know, corrupted data, we know” she then stood up abruptly. “Right!” here she pointed the finger of doom at Gordon and the other brothers let out a barely audible sigh of relief “You. Me. Moffie. On the phone now!”

“What? Why me? And why Moffie?” Gordon looked slightly panicked.

“Well firstly we need to find out what the plans are with Moffie, and secondly we’re clearly not relying on these boring bastards to help improve the plans are we?” She explained matter of factly. 

“Ok,” Gordon conceded “you make very good points. Let's do this!” he leapt to his feet and the pair left the room to plot.

“Should we be concerned?” asked Virgil, his posture relaxing visibly as the footsteps retreated further.

“Just leave it, it's best not to ask” Scott replied, finally returning to his reports.

“Huh?” asked John looking up, having apparently only just noticed his wife's departure. 

“Never mind,” Scott and Virgil sang in unison, and that appeared to be enough for the spaceman, who delved back into the scrolling code, which made sense to only him and possibly Brains. 

Gordon and Selene managed to get hold of Moffie. Who, it turned out, was also in the dark about Brains’ birthday, the reminder in her calendar having mysteriously disappeared. She didn't take much convincing to add a few additions to the dinner plans she and Brains already had in place. Between them the plans came together. 

So it was that two weeks later that Scott, Virgil, John and Selene were waiting outside a London restaurant, with a whole bundle of foil birthday balloons, ready to ambush the poor birthday boy. Gordon and Selene had put in a lot of thought about what Brains would and wouldn't want to do for his birthday, they didn't intend to traumatise the man, at least not sober that is. They had found an evening event at The Science Museum in South Kensington which promised to be perfect, plenty of geeky stuff and a ticket only event so not too many crowds.

Brains looked ready to bolt when he saw them all, complete with balloons, but a few quiet reassuring words from Moffie and Selene soon had him relaxed and being directed towards the museum. 

The displays at the museum had the desired effect, and Moffie and Brains were bouncing about like they’d downed a full bag of Haribo. In fact the whole geek contingent were still so completely wired by the time the event came to a close, that it was like trying to herd a pack of cats. Selene delved into her not insubstantial hand bag, hoping to find some sort of inspiration or bribery to coax them all with. It soon became clear that packing them all off home was not going to be an option. She caught Gordons eye, waggling her eyebrows in what she hoped was a “help me with this lot” kind of gesture. Amazingly he looked to have understood it, but still came up with a blank and shrugged back at her. While this exchange was taking place, Moffie had taken matters into her own hands.

“Right, who's for Karaoke?” she linked her arm around Brains’ elbow and flagged down a taxi just coming into the nearby rank. 

“Oh God,” Selene whispered to Gordon, “Should we do something? Karaoke doesn't strike me as a Brains type activity”

“Well he doesn't seem to be putting up a fight, and frankly, I don't fancy our chances in redirecting the Professor at this point, she looks pretty determined” Selene agreed that he had a point, as by now they were getting stuffed into a cab with very little ceremony, by a Moffie on a mission. 

It turned out that they needn't have worried. It soon became very clear that Brains was very much home at the Karaoke establishment they arrived at, it being a regular haunt of the pair of scientists when they met in London. It was the sort of place where you hired a room, which Moffie had, having planned this part of the evening far more than her off the cuff suggestion would have led them to believe. 

Gordon set to ordering an exciting array of drinks from the menu, and Moffie lined up a few of her and Brains’ signature tunes to get the party started. A couple of rounds of cocktails and several songs later and everyone was getting into the swing of it. Virgil and Gordon had performed an Abba medley, Brains was belting out some Celine Dion, Selene and Scott were arguing over a couple of power ballads in a good natured kind of way. John was contentedly tucked into a corner, watching the proceedings from a safe distance. Selene had retrieved a heavy backed book she had bought for him in the Science Museum gift shop from the dark recesses of her cavernous handbag. He had jimmied one of the disco lights in the corner to provide a perfect reading light, and had a beer in one hand, all was fine by him. 

In this vein the evening progressed, with many drinks, and a looser connection to original key signatures being deployed in parallel with the drinks tally. The overall result was that when they were finally kicked out at closing time, things had got a little silly. If excitable geeks had been like herding cats, then a drunk pack of Tracys and honorary Tracys was more like ferrets on a sugar high. Thankfully Selene was at the chilled stage of drunk that meant she really didn't care, she was more than happy to anchor herself to her rather lovely husband and let him steer them homeward, everyone else could fend for themselves. The plan was working delightfully right up to the point where Gordon tried to be Spiderman and climb up a wall. Needless to say he wasn't very successful and he was soon very vocal about this. It was a sign of how drunk the others were that both Scott and Virgil were easily dragged into pawing at the wall, trying to find out why it wasn’t sticky enough to climb.

“Brains will know!” cried Scott, ever the problem solver. Virgil promptly ran ahead to where Brains and Moffie were making their staggering progress, plucked the man off the ground, flung him over his shoulder and trotted back to Gordon and Scott at the offending wall.

“Got ‘im!” Virgil beamed, very pleased with himself, depositing Brains slightly unsteadily on his feet.

Gordon proceeded to gabble at the man “Brains! We need to climb the wall like Spiderman, but the wall is all WRONG! Why can't we? make it work!” he pleaded, deploying puppy dog eyes for good measure, although they came off a little wonky due to the amount of cocktails he had consumed earlier.

“Maybe your hands are wrong Gordon?” said Scott, trying to grab at one of his siblings waving hands, but failing to coordinate his movements enough to be successful, yes, many cocktails had happened. This all set off Virgil, who began to giggle in a surprisingly high pitched manner. What followed was a chain reaction of giggles, that spread through John, Selene and finally Moffie. But in the centre of it all Brains seemed to sober up as if a light switch had been flicked.

“That's a brilliant idea G-Gordon!” cried Brains. The next thing he was pawing at Selene's bag. 

“Whoa there, grabby, mind the merchandise!” she batted at his hands lightly.

“Do you have anything I could write on in here?” he asked, looking a little frenzied.

A little investigation into the furthest reaches of the bag produced a half chewed biro and leaflet for a bird of prey sanctuary that was blank on the back. Brains seemed happy enough with this and set to scribbling down his thoughts merrily as the rest of them wobbled their way to a taxi.

No more thought was given to that particular moment of their night out, until several months later when the gecko gloves were unveiled for initial testing at Grand Rocha Ranch. 

“Oh my god Brains, these are epic!” Gordon nearly squealed, “I’m gonna be SPIDERMAN!” and he bounded off to the climbing wall the happiest of happy campers. Brains blushed slightly at the praise. 

“I don't know where you come up with these ideas Brains, it really is amazing” Grandma added her own praise. The blush deepened on Brains’ cheeks, but thankfully Grandma didn't seem to expect a response and was distracted by watching Gordon scurry up the wall, or be literally thrown by his brothers.


End file.
